The invention relates to a container made of plastic, or of a plastic/wood complex, capable of receiving any type of product, prepackaged or powdery products, or even liquids.
This container is capable of being folded up on itself so as to decrease its overall size and to provide a saving in storage space of approximately six times its volume when it is transported empty. It is therefore also capable of being re-used and is furthermore stackable, on account of the requirements related to the transportation of foodstuffs, when said package is assembled.
Many types of package are known to date which are capable of being folded up, of being stacked and of being re-used. These packages are conventionally produced from cardboard, and their assembly or, on the contrary, their folding-up, is effected very easily in the region of the folding lines defining the edges of said package.
However, on the one hand, this type of cardboard package is not proof against trickling especially of liquids, and, on the other hand and especially, it does not impart to assemblies of cardboard containers, stacked on top of each other, sufficient stability which is increasingly sought nowadays.
Packages produced from plastic have therefore being proposed which are themselves possibly leaktight and stackable much more easily than cardboard containers, since it is possible to produce, by molding or thermoforming, orifices intended to receive feet which are either added or result from the molding. On the other hand, they cannot be folded up and consequently the overall space which they take up, when the empty packages have to be returned to the loading site, significantly increases the cost of returning.
In order to overcome this drawback, a plastic package has been proposed, for example in the document U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,087, the various walls of which are produced especially by extrusion, said walls being joined together by means of metal corner pieces.
The side walls defining this package are received, on the one hand, in a base also produced from plastic, the lid fitting over the side walls, said lid also being made of plastic. Moreover, the lid is equipped with reception orifices intended to receive the feet with which the base is equipped, and this is done so as to permit stable stacking of these packages on top of each other.
However, this type of container has an appreciable weight, especially inherent in the use of metal corner pieces, and, furthermore, its assembly, although not requiring special skills, causes a non-negligible loss of time.